NEW YORK (AP) – As the coronavirus swept the globe last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sank into the shadows, undermined by some mistakes of their own and stifled by an administration aimed at minimizing the nation’s suffering.
Now, a new CDC director is embarking on a gigantic task: reaffirming the agency while the pandemic is in its deadliest phase, and the nation’s largest vaccination campaign is ravaged by confusion and delays.
“I don’t know if the CDC is broken or just temporarily injured,” but something needs to be done to bring it back to health, said Timothy Westmoreland, a public health law professor at Georgetown University.
The task falls to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, 51, an infectious disease specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, who is expected to become CDC director this week – a period in which the American virus’s death toll has eclipsed 400,000 and continues. to accelerate.
Although the agency has retained some of its top scientific talent, public health experts say, it has a long list of needs, including new protection against political influence, a comprehensive review of its pandemic mistakes and more money for strengthening basic functions such as disease tracking and genetic analysis.
Walensky said one of his top priorities will be to improve CDC communications with the public to rebuild trust. Inside the agency, she wants to lift morale, largely by restoring the supremacy of science and putting politics on the sidelines.
The speed with which he assumes the job is unusual. In the past, the post was generally vacant until a new secretary for health and human services was confirmed, and the official appointed a CDC director. But this time, the Biden transition team called Walensky in advance so she could take the reins of the agency just before her boss was in place.
Walensky, an HIV researcher, has not worked for the CDC or a state or local health department. But she has emerged as a prominent voice on the pandemic, sometimes criticizing certain aspects of the state and national response. His goals included unequal transmission prevention measures last summer and the approval of a prominent Trump adviser for a “herd immunity” approach. which would allow the virus to release.
He acknowledged the weaknesses in his resume. “When people write about me as a selection for this position, they will say, ‘But she has no public health experience on the ground,'” she said during a podcast with the Journal of the American Medical Association..
The podcast’s host, Dr. Howard Bauchner, who is also the magazine’s editor, praised her effusively. “I can’t imagine the CDC and the country being luckier … especially just because you can communicate, which is such an important task for the CDC chief,” he said.
Walensky did not respond to requests for an interview from the Associated Press.
She will be succeeded by Dr. Robert Redfield, 69, who came to the CDC with a CV similar to a foreign academic. Redfield has maintained a low profile for the first two years of his term, after being appointed by the Trump administration in 2018. CDC veteran scientists have handled crises, such as a nationwide increase in national hepatitis A cases among people. homeless and illicit drug users and a mysterious increase in serious illness in people who smoke electronic cigarettes.
The treatment of the COVID-19 outbreak began in a similar way. The scientists took the lead, holding regular press conferences to inform the public about the emerging issue.
But the agency stumbled in February when a test for the virus sent to the states turned out to be defective. Then later this month, a top CDC expert, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, upset the Trump administration by speaking honestly at a news conference. about the dangers of the virus when President Donald Trump was still minimizing it.
Within weeks, the agency was pushed off the scene. Redfield made appearances, but was often a third-rate speaker after statements dominated by Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and others.
The CDC “was put aside, it was condemned, it was a bag of speakers for many politicians in the foreign administration. And that has had a detrimental effect on the agency’s ability to accomplish its mission, “said Dr. Richard Besser, a former CDC official who now runs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
White House officials have also taken steps to try to monitor the CDC’s scientific reports and guidance on its website. For example, the agency removed the guidelines who recommended limiting the activities of the church choir, even though studies have shown the danger of transmitting extensive songs inside. The agency also dropped guidelines advising that anyone who came into close contact with an infected person be tested – then re-adopted it after criticism. from health experts.
“People across the political spectrum have had reason to doubt the veracity and accuracy, sometimes, of the CDC’s messages,” said Adriane Casalotti of the National Association of Health Officials in Counties and Cities.
While public health veterans say they don’t know everything that happened behind the scenes, they say Redfield apparently failed to support the agency’s scientists, refused to contradict Trump and those around him, and he passively allowed the Trump administration to post his message on CDC websites.
“He was unwilling to resign when necessary or be fired because he supported the principle,” said David Holtgrave, a former CDC staff member who is now dean of the School of Public Health at New York State University in Albany. .
Redfield refused to be interviewed.
The pandemic also exposed some of the CDC’s failures and unrelated weaknesses. The issue of the test kit was related to laboratory contamination at the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta – a sign of negligence. The CDC has also lost its position as a national source of research into the number of cases and other measures of the epidemic, after university researchers and others developed better infection tracking systems.
Much of this is related to funding cycles for the national public health system that rise in response to a crisis and then fall, affecting efforts to prevent the next crisis.
Last week, Biden said he would ask for $ 160 billion for vaccinations and other public health programs, including an effort to expand the public health workforce. with 100,000 jobs.
Westmoreland in Georgetown has called for a law or other measure to ban said politicians from having an editorial review of CDC science and to ban their control when the agency publishes information. He also recommended a review by the CDC to determine whether the agency’s problems could be traced to mismanagement by Trump’s so-called politicians or whether there were deeper flaws in the organization.
Some experts suggest that an administration that values science and increases funding could bring the CDC back to prominence. Biden is committed to bringing scientists to the problems of COVID-19, Besser said.
“I think that will be remedied on the first day,” he said. “One of the things that gives me hope is that I haven’t seen a big exodus from the CDC in the last year. I saw professionals doing their job. I saw the mental charge they were taking, but I didn’t see them give up. ”
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